Re: Mom's Diet Can Shape Baby's Brain

[Guest guest]

Very interesting!  I knew there was something to it.   All 3 of my boys have

varied diets and eat healthy foods but their favorite foods are the ones that I

craved and ate lots of during pregnancy.  When I was pregnant with my first I

had insatiable cravings for pancakes.  He is 8 now and he would eat pancakes or

waffles everyday if I let him. If we go out to eat he will always choose a place

where he can get pancakes for dinner.  With my 2nd I craved apples.  Some days

I would eat a 5lb bag of apples.  He is almost 6 and eats an apple every night

before bed for his night time snack.  My youngest is 2 and LOVES sandwiches,

any kind.  When I was pregnant I HAD to have a sub almost every day.

From: jeannne buesser <jbmistletoe@...>

Subject: [ ] Mom's Diet Can Shape Baby's Brain

ApraxiaNetworkOfBergenCountyegroups,

Date: Friday, December 17, 2010, 2:43 PM

 

Mom's Diet Can Shape Baby's Brain

By eating a nutritious and varied diet, pregnant mothers can start their

children on the road toward healthy eating.

By Sohn | Mon Dec 13, 2010 10:00 AM ET

Pregnant and nursing mothers have new reason to eat well, suggests a new study.

Flavors in a mom's diet shape her baby's brain, the study found, and that may

alter her child's lifelong likes and dislikes for certain foods. The findings

could help mothers start as early as possible to turn their children into

healthy eaters.

" It's clear in humans that the more varied nutrition of the mom, the more open

the baby is going to be to different things, " said Diego Restrepo, a

neuroscientist at the University of Colorado, Denver. " What's new here is that

what a mother eats changes the brain of her baby. "

Scientists have long known that, for humans and other mammals, what a mother

eats influences the flavor of her amniotic fluid and later her breast milk, said

Mennella, a biopsychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center in

Philadelphia. Research has also shown that the flavors babies are exposed to --

both in the womb and in the months after birth -- influence what they later

choose to eat.

In one of Mennella's studies, for example, mothers who drank carrot juice during

pregnancy or while nursing had babies who, by about six months of age, chose to

eat larger amounts of carrot-flavored cereal compared to babies whose mothers

had drunk only water during pregnancy. The carrot-exposed babies also made fewer

negative faces while eating the flavored cereal.

In the new study, Restrepo and colleagues fed a variety of diets to pregnant

mice. Some mouse moms got a standard, mostly flavorless chow. Others ate food

that was spiked with a strong flavor, such as cherry or mint. Three weeks after

birth, when weaning was complete, the researchers allowed the babies to sniff at

scented or unscented food pellets during a series of three-minute trials.

Babies born to mothers that had eaten mint-flavored food spent about 70 percent

of the time in their trials sniffing at mint-scented pellets, the researchers

reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Prenatal cherry

exposure had the same effect on a baby's desire to smell cherry-scented foods.

Those numbers were about the same whether moms had eaten the flavors while

pregnant, nursing or both.

Babies of the less daring eaters, on the other hand, only spent 30 percent of

their time sniffing at the strong scents. Those results confirmed what earlier

studies have found. To take the research one step further, the scientists also

looked into the brains of the baby mice.

In particular, they focused on structures called glomeruli, which are receptors

that respond to individual odors and from there, send messages to the brain

about what you just smelled. One glomerulus, for example, reacts to the odor of

mint. Another reacts to cherry. And odors, scientists now know, are the root of

flavor and taste.

In the mice that had been exposed to a strong flavor through their mothers,

results showed that the glomeruli for that odor were 50 percent bigger compared

to mice that hadn't been exposed.

Those brain differences could offer a biological explanation for why children

might be more receptive later in life to the flavors they experience in their

earliest months.

The study also gives insight into one of the very first ways we learn about what

to eat. In our ancestors and in other mammals, the system probably evolved to

make sure babies only ate what was safe and healthy for them.

For humans today, the new insights could help guide women as they make some of

their very first parenting decisions.

" It's a beautiful, beautiful system that confers an advantage to a baby learning

about foods, " Mennella said. " The earliest and best way for women to start is to

enjoy these healthy, nutritious diets rich in fruits and vegetables while

pregnant and lactating. The consequences are going to be far-reaching. "